Lowest blood sugar you have seen

[AfloydRN, BSN, RN]

After being an RN for a long time, I thought I had seen alot. Was wondering what the lowest blood sugar level you have seen on a conscious patient. My little man from last week's was 12.

[Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN]

10. Retook it on another machine, got the same thing. Now HOW that person was sitting up and talking is beyond me.

[llg, PhD, RN]

I have a friend who has severe hypoglycemia. During a diagnostic test, she got to 5 before she passed out.

[psalm, RN]

...had a pt. have 814 at night and then a 17 in the morning. Talking and complaining at both poles...

[P_RN, ADN, RN]

I saw a documented and witnessed BS of 1.

[LouRN92]

I'd be interested if this was a blood sugar off a glucometer or a lab verified value. When we have low sugars we always have to verify it with lab. Same with high sugars.

[llg, PhD, RN]

My friend with a 5 was in the lab at the time she passed out, getting blood drawn periodically as part of a diagnostic test. So I know that it was a verified value.

[babynurselsa, RN]

I have seen a 2 twice. On Neonates, verified by lab.

[Patience]

I was going to answer, but our ways of measuring blood sugar are different.

Can i ask how you measure your in the states?

For us a Blood Sugar of between 5-9mmol is considered great.

But i've seen a patient with a blood sugar of 1.9,

[llg, PhD, RN]

I was going to answer, but our ways of measuring blood sugar are different.

Can i ask how you measure your in the states?

For us a Blood Sugar of between 5-9mmol is considered great.

But i've seen a patient with a blood sugar of 1.9,

When we talk about blood sugars in the US, we generally mean blood glucose -- a single moment "snapshot" of the current level. If it is measured in whole blood in (e.g. in a finger stick), the upper end of the normal range is around 110. I forget what the low end of the range is, but it is somewhere around 70 or 80 I think. (I'm sure someone will correct me if I am wrong on that.)

When specimens are sent to the lab, it get spun down and the glucose is measured in the serum and not the whole blood. Those levels tend to be about 10% lower. The upper end of normal is considered to be about 70-100.

For people with glucose metabolism issues (such as diabetics), we also measure the Hemoglobin A1C -- which indicates how the glucose has been running over the last 3 or 4 months. That may be test you mentioned with the range of 5-9. My physician (and many others) prefer to set 6 as a goal for their diabetic patients. As a newly diagnosed diabetic, my official goal is to keep mine below 6 -- though I am stiving for below 5.

[talaxandra]

The US measures in mg/dL; metric countries like Canada and Australia (among other) use mmol/L, and HbA1C is universal.

Patience's 1.9mmol/L converts to 34 mg/dL; my (not personal!) all time low of 0.8 mmol/L is 14 mg/dL.

These are both convincingly beaten by the 1, 2 and 5mg/dL reading mentioned by US nurses above - they all equal a metric reading of 0.0mmol/L!

[cwinlv]

The patient, a 23 yr old type-1 diabetic for more than 20 yrs, received an inadvertently high dose of insulin when the night shift nurse "primed" the insulin pump while the catheter was in place (he later said he was not familiar with a pump... no kidding!). The patient experienced a hypoglycemic seizure three hours later. The accucheck received an error message and was unable to read the glucose level. A serum sample tubed off to the lab was later reported as "less than 5."

This incident happened to my daughter while she was in the hospital recovering from a cardiac arrest and emergency thoracotomy during the birth of my granddaughter.